The FFVIII Labyrinth
by Akira Majere
Summary: Quistis wishes her brother, Zell, to be taken away by SeeDs. And when it happens, Quistis is forced to save baby Zell.
1. Chapter 1

**THE LABYRINTH NOVEL: FFVIII Style**

Original By A.C.H Smith  
Retold by: Akira

**Chapter One: The White Owl**

Nobody saw the owl, white in the moonlight, black against the stars, nobody heard him as he glided over on silent wings of velvet. The owl saw and heard everything.  
He settled in a tree, his claws hooked on a branch, and he stared at the girl in the glade below. The wind moaned, rocking the branch, scudding low clouds across the evening sky. It lifted the golden hair of the girl. The owl was watching her, with his round, dark eyes.   
The girl moved slowly from the trees toward the middle of the glade, where a pool glimmered. She was concentrating. Each deliberate step took her nearer to her purpose. Her hands were open, and held slightly in front of her. The wind sighed again in the trees. It blew her cloak tightly against her slender figure, and rustled her hair around her wide-eyed face. Her lips were parted.   
"Give me the child," Quistis said, in a voice that was low, but firm with the courage her quest needed. She halted, her hands still held out. "Give me the child," she repeated. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the SeeD City, to take back the child you have stolen." She bit her lip and continued, "For my will is as strong as yours . . . and my kingdom as great . . ."   
She closed her eyes tightly. Thunder rumbled. The owl blinked, once.   
"My will is as strong as yours." Quistis spoke with even more intensity now. "And my kingdom as great . . ." She frowned, and her shoulders dropped.  
"Oh, damn," she muttered.   
Reaching under her cloak and into the sleeve of her shirt, she brought out a book. Its title was The Labyrinth. Holding the book up before her, she read aloud from it. In the fading light, it was not easy to make out the words. "You have no power over me . . ."  
She got no further. Another clap of thunder, nearer this time, made her jump. It also alarmed a oversize collie-mix, who had not minded sitting by the pool and being admonished by Quistis, but who now decided that it was time to go home, and said so with several sharp barks.  
Quistis held her cloak around her. It did not give her much warmth, being no more than an old curtain, cut down, and fastened at the neck by a glass brooch. She ignored Angelo, the collie-mix, while concentrating on learning the speech in the book. "You have no power over me," she whispered. She closed her eyes again and repeated the phrase several times.   
A clock above the little pavilion in the park chimed seven times and penetrated Quistis's concentration. She stared at Angelo. "Oh, no," she said. "I don't believe it. That was seven, wasn't it?"   
Angelo stood up and shook himself, sensing that some more interesting action was due. Quistis turned and ran. Angelo followed. The thunderclouds splattered them both with large drops of rain.  
The owl had watched it all. When Quistis and Angelo left the park, he sat still on his branch, in no hurry to follow them. This was his time of day. He knew what he wanted. An owl is born with all his questions answered.   
All the way down the street, which was lined on both sides with privet-hedged Victorian houses similar to her own, Quistis was muttering to herself, "It's not fair, it's not fair." The mutter had turned to a gasp by the time she came within sight of her home. Angelo, having bounded along with her on his shaggy paws, was wheezing, too. His mistress, who normally moved at a gentle, dreamy pace, had this odd habit of liking to sprint home from the park in the evening. Perhaps that owl had something to do with it. Angelo was not sure. He didn't like the owl, he knew that.   
"It's not fair." Quistis was close to sobbing. The world at large was not fair, hardly ever, but in particular her stepmother was ruthlessly not fair to her. There she stood now, in the front doorway of the house, all dressed up in that frightful, dark red  
evening gown of hers and she was looking at her watch. Not just looking at it but staring at it, to make good and sure that Quistis would feel guilty before she was accused, again.   
As Quistis came to a halt on the path in the front garden, she could hear her baby brother, Zell, bawling inside the house. He was her half brother really, but she did not call him that, not since her school friend Xu had asked, "What's the other half of him, then?" and Quistis had been unable to think of an answer. "Half nothing-to-do-with-me." That was no good. It wasn't true, either. Sometimes she felt fiercely protective of Zell, wanted to dress him up and carry him in her arms and take him away  
from all this, to a better place, a fairer world, an island somewhere, perhaps. At other times – and this was one – she hated  
Zell, who had twice as many parents in attendance on him as she had. When she hated Zell, it frightened her, because it led  
her into thinking about how she could hurt him.  
_There must be something wrong with me_, she would reflect,_ that I can even think of hurting someone I dote upon; or is it that there is something wrong in doting upon someone I hate?_ She wished she had a friend who would understand the dilemma, and maybe explain it to her, but there was no one. Her friends at school would think her a witch if she even mentioned the idea of hurting Zell, and as for her father, it would frighten her even more than it frightened Quistis herself. So she kept the perplexity well hidden.   
Quistis stood before her stepmother and deliberately held her head high. "I'm sorry," she said, in a bored voice, to show that she wasn't sorry at all, and anyway, it was unnecessary to make a thing out of it.   
"Well," her stepmother told her, "don't stand out there in the rain. Come on." She stood aside, to make room for Quistis to pass her in the doorway, and she glanced again at her wristwatch.   
Quistis made a point of never touching her stepmother, not even brushing against her clothes. She edged inside close to the  
door frame. Angelo started to follow her.   
"Not the dog," her stepmother said.  
"But it's pouring."   
Her stepmother wagged her finger at Angelo, twice. "In the garage, you," she commanded. "Go on."   
Angelo dropped his head and loped around the side of the house. Quistis watched him go and bit her lip. _Why_, she wondered for the trillionth time, _does my stepmother always have to put on this performance when they go out in the evening_. It was so hammy – that was one of Quistis's favorite words, since she had heard her mother's costar, Laguna, use it to put down another actor in the play they were doing – such a rag-bag of over-the-top clichés. She remembered how Laguna had sounded French when she said clichés, thrilling her with his sophistication. Why couldn't her stepmother find a new way into the part?  
Oh, she loved the way in which Laguna talked about other actors. She was determined to become an actress herself, so that she could talk like that all the time. Her father seldom talked at all about people at his office, and when he did it was dreary in comparison.  
Her stepmother closed the front door, looking at her watch once more, took a deep breath, and started one of her clichéd  
speeches. "Quistis, you're an hour late . . ."   
Quistis opened her mouth, but her stepmother cut her off, with a little, humorless smile.   
"Please let me finish, Quistis. Your father and I go out very rarely –"   
"You go out every weekend," Quistis interrupted rapidly.   
Her stepmother ignored that. "– and I ask you to baby-sit only if it won't interfere with your plans."   
"How would you know?" Quistis had half turned away, so as not to flatter her stepmother with her attention, and was busy with putting her book on the hall stand, unclipping her brooch, and folding the cloak over her arm. "You don't know what my plans are. You don't even ask me." She glanced at her own face in the mirror of the hall stand, checking that her expression was cool and poised, not over the top. She liked the clothes she was wearing: a cream-colored shirt with full sleeves, a brocaded waistcoat loosely over the shirt, blue jeans, and a leather belt. She turned even further away from her stepmother, to check on how her shirt hung from her breasts down to her waist. She tucked it in a little at the belt, to make it tighter and show off her flat stomach even more.   
Her stepmother was watching her coldly. "I am assuming you would tell me if you had a date. I would like it if you had a date. A eighteen-year-old girl should have dates."   
_Well_, Quistis was thinking, _if I did have a date you are the last person I would tell. What a hammy – no, tacky – view of life you do have_. She smiled grimly to herself. _Perhaps I will have a date, she thought, perhaps I will, but you will not like it, not one bit, when you see who's dating me. I doubt you will see him. All you will know about it is hearing the front door shut behind me, and you will sneak to the window, as you always do, and poke your nose between those horrid phony-lace curtains you put up there, and you will see the taillights of a wicked dove-gray limousine vanishing around the corner. And after that, you will keep seeing pictures in the magazines of the two of us together in Bermuda, and St. Tropez, and Benares. And there will be nothing at all you can possibly do about it, for all your firm views on bedtimes and developmental psychology and my duties and rolling up the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Oh, stepmother, you are going to be sorry when you read in Vogue about the cosmic cash that Hollywood producers are offering us for_ –   
Quistis's father came down the stairs into the hall. In his arms he was carrying Zell, clad in red-and-white striped pajamas. He patted the baby's back. "Oh, Quistis," he said mildly, "you're here at last. We were worried about you."   
"Oh, leave me alone!" Afraid that she might be close to tears, Quistis gave them no chance to reason with her. She ran upstairs. They were always so reasonable, particularly her father, so long-suffering and mild with her, so utterly convinced that they were always obviously in the right, and that it was only a matter of time before she consented to do as they wished. Why did her father always take that woman's side? Her mother never wore that look of pained tolerance. She was a woman who could shout and laugh and hug you and slap you all within a minute or two. When she and Quistis had a quarrel, it was an explosion. Five minutes later, it was forgotten.  
In the hallway, her stepmother had sat down, still in her fur coat. Wearily, she was saying, "I don't know what to do anymore. She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy tale, no matter what I say. I have tried, Cid."  
"Well . . ." Quistis's father patted Zell thoughtfully. "It is hard to have your mother walk out on you at that age. At any age, I suppose."   
"That's what you always say. And of course you're right. But will she never change?"   
Holding Zell in one arm, Cid patted his wife on the shoulder. "Adel, I'll go and talk to her."  
Thunder rumbled again. A squall of raindrops clattered on the windows.  
Quistis was in her room. It was the only safe place in the world. She made a point of going all around it each day, checking that everything was just where it had been and should be. Although her stepmother seldom came in there, except to deliver some ironed clothes or to give Quistis a message, she was not to be trusted. It would be typical of her to take it into her head to dust the room, even though Quistis made sure that it was kept clean, and then she would be bound to move things around and not put them back where they belonged. It was essential to ward off that disturbing spirit.   
All the books had to remain in the proper positions, in alphabetical order by author and, within each author's group, in order of acquisition. Other shelves were filled with toys and dolls, and they were positioned according to affinities known only to Quistis.  
The curtains had to hang exactly so that, when Quistis was lying on her bed, they symmetrically framed the second poplar tree in a line that she could see from the window. The wastepaper basket stood so that its base just touched the edge of one  
particular block on the parquet floor. It would be unsafe if these things were not so. Once let disorder set in, and the room  
would never be familiar again. People talked about how upsetting it was to be burgled, and Quistis knew just how it must feel,  
as though some uncaring stranger were fooling around with your most precious soul. The woman who came in to clean three  
times a week knew that she was never to do anything to this room. Quistis looked after everything in there herself. She had  
learned how to fix electric plugs, and tighten screws, and hang pictures, so that her father should have no need to come in  
except to speak to her.  
Quistis was now standing in the middle of her room. Her eyes were red. She sniffled, and chewed her lower lip. Then she  
walked over to her dressing table and gazed at a framed photograph. Her father and mother, and herself, aged ten, gazed back  
at her. Her parents' smiles were confident. Her own face in the photograph was, she thought, slightly over the top, grinning too  
keenly.  
All around the room, other eyes watched. Photographs and posters displayed her mother in various costumes, for various  
parts. Clippings from Variety were taped to the mirror of the dressing table, praising her mother's performances or announcing  
others she would give. On the wall beside the bed was pinned a poster advertising her latest play; in the picture, Quistis's  
mother, Edea, and her costar, Laguna, were cheek to cheek, their arms around each other, smiling confidently. The photographer had lit the pair beautifully, showing her to be so pretty, he so handsome, with his brunette hair and a golden chain around his neck. Beneath the picture was a quote from one of the theater critics: "I have seldom felt such warmth irradiating an audience." The poster was signed, with large flourishing signatures: "For Darling Quistis, with all my love, Mom," and, in a different hand, "All Good Wishes, Quistis – Laguna." Near the poster were more press clippings, from different newspapers, arranged in chronological order. In them, the two stars could be seen dining together in restaurants, drinking together at parties, and laughing together in a little rowboat. The texts were all on the theme of "Romancing on and off the stage."  
Still sniffling from time to time, Quistis went to the small table beside her bed and picked up the music box her mother had given her for her fifteenth birthday. The memory of that gorgeous day was still vivid. A taxi had been sent for her in the morning, but instead of going to her mother's place it had taken her along the waterfront to where Laguna and her mother were waiting in  
Laguna's old black Mercedes. They went out into the country for lunch beside a swimming pool at some club where Laguna  
was a member and the waiters spoke French, and later, in the pool, Laguna had clowned around, pretending to drown, to such  
an effect that an elderly man had rung the alarm bell. They had giggled all the way back to town. At her mother's place, Quistis  
was given Laguna's present, an evening gown in pale blue. She wore it to go with them to a new musical that evening, and  
afterward to supper, in a dimly lit restaurant.  
Laguna was wickedly funny about every member of the cast they had seen in the musical. Quistis's mother had pretended to disapprove of his scandalous gossip, but that had only made Quistis and Laguna laugh more uncontrollably, and soon all three of them had tears in their eyes. Laguna had danced with Quistis, smiling down at her. He kidded her that a flashbulb meant that they'd be all over the gossip columns next morning, and all the way home he drove fast, to shake off the photographers, he claimed, grinning. As they said good night, her mother gave Quistis a little parcel, wrapped in silver paper and tied with a pale blue bow. Back in her room, Quistis had unwrapped it, and found the music box.  
The tune of "Greensleeves" tinkled, and a little dancer in a frilly pink dress twirled pirouettes. Quistis watched it reverently, until it became slow and jerky in motion. Then she put it down, and quietly recited from a poem she had studied in her English class:  
"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,  
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"  
It was so easy to learn poetry by heart. She never had any difficulty in remembering those lines, whenever she opened the  
music box. In fact, she reflected, it's easier to remember them than to forget them. So why was she having such trouble in  
learning the speech from The Labyrinth? It was only a game she was playing. No one was waiting for her to rehearse it, no  
audience, except Angelo, would judge her performance of it. It should have been a piece of cake. She frowned. How could  
she ever hope to go on stage if she could not remember one speech?   
She tried again. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the  
SeeD City, to take back the child you have stolen . . ." She paused, her eyes on the poster of her mother in Laguna's arms,  
and decided it would help her performance if she prepared for it. If you're going to get into a part, her mother had told her,  
you've got to have the right prop. Costume and makeup and wigs – they were more for the actor's benefit than for the  
audience's. They helped you escape from your own life and find your way into the part, as Laguna said. And after each  
show, you take it all off, and you've wiped the slate clean. Every day was a fresh start. You could invent yourself again. Quistis  
took a lipstick from the drawer in her dressing table, put a little on her lips, and rolled them together, as her mother did. Her  
face close the mirror, she applied a little more to the corners of her mouth.  
There was a tapping on her door, and her father's voice came from outside. "Quistis? Can I talk to you?"  
Still looking in the mirror, she replied, "There's nothing to talk about."  
She waited. He would not come in unless she invited him. She imagined him standing there, frowning, rubbing his forehead,  
trying to think what he ought to say next, something firm enough to please that woman but amicable enough to reassure his  
daughter.   
"You'd better hurry," Quistis said, "if you want to make the show."  
"Zell's had his supper," her father's voice said, "and he's in bed now. If you could just make sure he goes to sleep all right,  
we'll be back around midnight."  
Again, a pause, then the sound of footsteps walking away, with a slowness measured to express a blend of concern and  
resignation. He had done all that could be expected of him.  
Quistis turned from the mirror and stared accusingly at the closed door. "You really wanted to talk to me, didn't you?" she  
murmured. "Practically broke down the door." Once upon a time, he would not have gone out without giving her a kiss. She  
sniffled. Things had certainly changed in this house.  
She put the lipstick in her pocket and wiped her lips with a tissue. As she went to throw it in the wastepaper basket, something caught her eye. More exactly, something that was not there caught her eye. Launcelot was not there.  
Rapidly, she rummaged through her shelf of toys and dolls and cuddly things, dogs and monkeys and soldiers and clowns,  
though she knew it would be fruitless. If the teddy bear were there at all, he would have been in his appointed place. He had  
gone. The order of the room had been violated. Quistis's cheeks were hot.  
Someone's been in my room, she thought. I hate her.  
Outside, the taxi was pulling away. Quistis heard it and ran to the window.  
"I hate you," she screamed.  
No one heard her save Angelo, and he could do no more than he was doing already, which was to bark loudly, in the garage.  
She knew where she would find Launcelot. Zell already had everything his baby heart could desire, had so much more than Quistis herself had ever had; yet more was given to him, every day, without question. She stormed into the nursery. The teddy bear was spread-eagle on the carpet, just tossed away, like that. Quistis picked Launcelot up and clutched him to her. Zell, full of warm milk, had almost been asleep in his crib. Quistis's entrance aroused him.  
She glared at the baby. "I hate her. I hate you."   
Zell started to cry. Quistis shuddered, and held Launcelot still more tightly.

_____________________________________________  
Whatca think? Should I go or stop now? This is just something to keep the creative juices flowing while I'm bouncing off an important idea with my editors. Expect the next Chapter soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: What's Said Is Said**

Quistis snapped finally, glaring at her younger brother, Quistis sat on her parent's bed and hissed, "you want a story? Fine! I'll give you a story!"  
Growling slightly, she began, "Once there was a beautiful golden hair girl, who the SeeD King loved, but was a slave to her family... Always feeding, caring, and watching her younger spoil, half-brother while her parents went out to party the night away. The girl remained silent, never really complaining as her dreams slowly began to die-."  
Zell wailed louder, not happy with the story at all.  
"ARUGH!" Snarled the female, as she stormed over to her brother and jerkily picked him up. Narrowing her eyes, she went on, "but one day when brother and step mother was especially cruel to the girl, she finally called upon the special powers King had bestowed upon the girl."  
Meeting the now softly sobbing baby's eyes and holding the boy up, she murmured, "she held him up high and yelled, 'SeeD King, SeeD King, take this child of mine far away from me'!"  
A bolt of lightning flashed and Zell wailed even louder then ever, sending his sister of the very edge. Setting him down, Quistis pulled a blanket over the wailing baby and hissed, "I wish the SeeD would come and take you away from here!"  
Walking towards the door, turning off the lights, she glanced once more of her shoulder and left the room. The storm raged on over Quistis's house. The clouds boiled. Rain lashed the leaves on the trees. Thunder was followed by lightning.  
Quistis was listening outside the door for a moment. What she was listening to was an unnatural silence within the room. Zell had stopped crying, so suddenly it scared her. She looked back inside the nursery. The bedside light was out. "Zell?" she called. He did not respond.  
She flicked the light switch beside the door. Nothing happened. She jiggled it up and down several times to no effect. A board creaked. "Zell? Are you all right? Why aren't you crying?"  
She stepped nervously into the quiet room. The light from the landing, coming through the doorway, threw unfamiliar shadows onto the walls and across the carpet. In the lull between two thunderclaps, she thought she heard a humming in the air. She could detect no movement at all in the crib.  
"Zell," she whispered in anxiety, and walked toward the crib with her breath drawn. Her hands were shaking like aspen leaves. She reached out to pull the sheet back.  
She recoiled. The sheet was convulsing. Weird shapes were thrusting and bulging beneath it. She thought she glimpsed things poking out from the edge of the sheet, things that were no part of Zell. She felt her heart thumping, and she put her hand over her mouth, to stop herself from screaming.  
Then the sheet was still again. It sank slowly down over the mattress. Nothing moved.  
She could not turn and run away and leave him. She had to know. Whatever the horror of it, she had to know. Impulsively, she reached out her hand and pulled the sheet back.  
The crib was empty.  
For a moment or an hour, she would never know how long, she stared at the empty crib. She was not even frightened. Her mind had been wiped clean.  
And then she was frightened, by a soft, rapid thumping on the windowpane. Her hands clenched so tightly, her fingernails scored her skin.  
A white owl was flapping insistently on the glass. She could see the light from the landing reflected in its great, round, dark eyes, watching her. The whiteness of its plumage was illuminated by a series of lightning flashes that seemed continuous. Behind her, a SeeD briefly raised his head, and ducked down again. Another did likewise. She didn't seem them. Her eyes were fixed on the owl's eyes.  
Lightning crackled and flashed again, and this time it distracted her attention from the window by shining on the clock that stood on the mantelpiece. She saw that the hands were at thirteen o'clock. She was staring distractedly at the clock when she felt something nudge the back of her legs. She glanced down. The crib was moving across the carpet on scaly legs like a lizard's, with talons for toes, one leg at each corner of the crib. Sarah's lips parted, but she made no sound.  
Behind her, something snickered. She spun around and saw it duck down again behind the chest of drawers. Shadows were scuttling across the walls. SeeDs were prancing and bobbing behind her. Quistis was watching the chest of drawers. Like the crib, it had a scaly, clawed foot at each corner, and it was dancing.  
She wheeled around, mouth open, hands clenched, and saw the SeeDs cavorting. They ducked away into the shadows, to evade her eyes. She looked for something that would serve as a weapon. In the corner of the nursery was an old broom. She took it and advanced upon the SeeDs. "Go away. Go away," she whimpered, trying to sweep them up, but the handle of the broom twisted in her hands and slithered out of her grasp.  
The storm wind rose to a pitch. Lightning made daylight in the room, and scared faces suddenly began to vanish into cupboards, drawers, or down the cracks between floorboards. As the thunder boomed and the wind shook the curtains, a blast of air blew the window open. Between the fluttering curtains the white owl entered.  
Quistis wrapped her arms around her face, and screamed, and screamed again. She was petrified that the flapping owl would brush across her. She thought she would die if it did.  
She felt the wind blowing her hair around, but the flapping had ceased. Between her fingers she peeked out, to see where the bird was perched. Perhaps it had flown out again.  
A prolonged crackling of lightning was throwing a giant shadow on the wall facing the window. It was the shadow of a human figure.  
Quistis spun around. Silhouetted against the stormy sky was a man. He wore a cloak, which swirled in the wind. She could see that his hair was shoulder-length and blond. Something glinted about his neck. More than that she could not see in the dim light.  
She said, "Uh . . .," and cleared her throat. "Who are you?"  
"Don't you know?" The man's voice was calm, almost kindly.  
Lightning traced the veins of the sky and lit up his face. He was not smiling, as one might smile on greeting a stranger, nor was his expression fierce. His eyes were fixed upon Quistis's with an intensity she found compelling. When he took a step toward her, into the light shining from the doorway, she did not retreat. If his eyes had not hypnotized her, the golden chain around his neck might have. A cross-like ornament hung from it, upon his chest. His shirt was navy-colored, open at the front,  
loose-sleeved, with silken cuffs at the wrist. Over it he wore a tight, grey waistcoat. He was shod in black boots, over gray tights, and on his hands were black gloves. In one of them he held the jeweled knob of a curious cane with a fishtail shape at the end.  
"I . . .," Quistis answered. "I . . ."  
The humming that she had thought she heard in the air was now quite distinct, and musical. The stranger smiled at her hesitancy. He was certainly handsome. She had not expected that. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper.  
"You're . . . him, aren't you?" You're the King of the SeeD."  
He bowed. "Seifer."  
She resisted the ridiculous impulse to return a curtsy.  
"I have saved you," he said. "I have liberated you from those bonds that distressed you and frightened you. You're free now, Quistis."  
"Oh, no. I don't want to be free," she answered. "I mean, I do, but – I want my little brother back. Please." She gave him a tiny smile. "If it's all the same to you."  
Seifer folded his hands on the top of his cane. "What's said is said."  
"But I didn't mean it," Quistis replied quickly.  
"Didn't you, now?"  
"Oh, please. Where is he?"  
Seifer chuckled. "You know very well where he is."  
"Please bring him, back, please." She heard herself speaking in a small voice. "Please!"  
"Quistis . . ." Seifer frowned, and shook his head. His expression was all concern for her. "Go back to your room. Read your books. Put on your costumes. That is your real life. Forget about the baby."  
"No, I can't."  
For a moment, they regarded each other, adversaries trying to size each other up at the outset of a long contest. Thunder rumbled.  
Then Seifer raised his left arm, and made a large gesture with his hand. Quistis looked around, thinking that he was summoning assistance. When she faced him again, a glowing crystal had appeared in his hand.  
"I've brought you a gift, Quistis," he said, holding it out to her.  
She paused. She could not trust him. "What is it?"  
"A crystal, nothing more. Except that if you look into it . . . it will show you your dreams."  
Quistis's lips parted involuntarily. With a teasing smile, Seifer watched her face, while he spun the shining crystal around in his fingers. Her hand started to reach out for it. He smiled a little more, and withdrew the crystal from her.  
Raising the cane with his other hand, he told her, "But this is not a gift for an ordinary girl, one who takes care of a screaming baby." His voice was quieter now, and huskier. "Do you want it, Quistis?" He held it out toward her again.  
This time her hands remained by her sides, and she made no answer. Her eyes were fixed on the dancing, flashing glints of the crystal. To see her own dreams – what wouldn't she give for that?  
"Then forget the child," Seifer said firmly.  
While Quistis hesitated, another bolt of thunder and lightning illuminated the sky behind the SeeD King.  
She was torn. The gift was not only seductive, it was also the choice of someone who understood her, someone who cared about the secret places of her imagination and knew how infinitely much more they meant to her than anything else. In return, she would have to trade her responsibility for an offensively spoiled child, who made endless demands on upon her and never showed the least sign of gratitude; who was, after all, only her half brother. The crystal was spinning, glowing.  
She willed her eyes to close. From behind shut eyelids, she heard a voice answering. It was her own voice, but it seemed to be a memory. "I – I can't. It isn't that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do for me . . . but I want my baby brother back. He must be so scared . . ." She opened her eyes again.  
Seifer snorted, and tossed his mane of blond hair. He had lost patience with the girl. With a wave of his hand, he extinguished the crystal. With another wave, he plucked a live snake from the air. He held it with a straight arm in front of him, so that it writhed and hissed near Quistis's face. Then he threw it at her. "Don't defy me," he warned her.  
It was wrapped around her neck. She clutched desperately at the thing, and found that it was now a silk scarf. She yelled, dropped it and jumped away. When it hit the floor it shattered into a number of horribly ugly little SeeDs, who scuttled, snickering, to the corners of the room. Other SeeDs crept from the shadows, or popped out from their hiding places, and stood, all around the room, brazen now, watching to see what their king would do to her next.  
"You are no match for me, Quistis." Seifer sounded impatient. "Let the child alone. Take my gift. I will not offer it to you again."  
Before he could produce the crystal, Quistis told him, "No." She paused. "Thank you all the same, but I can't do what you want. Can't you see that? I must have my brother back."  
"You will never find him."  
"Ah," Quistis said, and took a deep breath. "Then . . . there is a place to look."  
Just for a moment, Seifer's face flinched. Quistis saw it, the merest trace of fear fleeting across his eyes. Was it possible? His nostrils tightened, he gripped his cane, and appeared to hesitate slightly before answering her. She could not quite believe it,  
but the suspicion that the SeeD King could be afraid of her, even if only momentarily, was encouraging.  
"Yes," he said. "There is a place."  
And now, with a really hammy gesture straight out of vaudeville, he twirled his hand and pointed through the window.  
"There!"  
_Lightning and thunder, right on cue_, she thought. She moved past him and stared into the night. On a distant hill, brilliant in the flashes, she saw a castle. She leaned on the windowsill, trying to see more clearly. There were towers with turrets, massive walls, spires and domes, a portcullis and drawbridge. The whole edifice was built on top of a sharply rising mound. Around it the lightning flickered and forked like snakes' tongues. Beyond was blackness.  
From just behind her shoulder, Seifer murmured. "Do you still want to look for him?"  
"Yes." She swallowed. "Is that . . ." She remembered the words. " . . . the castle beyond the SeeD Garden?"  
Seifer did not answer at once, and she turned around. He was still there, watching her intensely, but they were no longer in the house. They stood facing each other on a windswept hilltop. Between them and the hill on which the castle stood was a broad valley. In the darkness she could not tell what was down there.  
She turned again. The wind blew her hair over her face. Brushing it back, she took one timid step forward.  
Seifer's voice came from behind her. "Turn back, Quistis. Turn back, before it is too late."  
"I can't. Oh, I can't. Don't you understand that?" She shook her head slowly, gazing at the distant castle, and to herself, quietly, repeated, "I can't."  
"What a pity." Seifer's voice was low, and gentle, as though he really meant it.  
She was looking at the castle. It seemed to be a long way off, but not impossibly far to travel. It depended on what she would encounter in the valley, how easily it could be crossed. Was the darkness down there perpetual? "It doesn't look that far," she said, and heard in her voice the effort she was making to sound brave.  
Seifer was at her elbow now. He looked at her, with a smile that was icy. "It's farther than you think." Pointing at a tree, he added, "And the time is shorter."  
Quistis saw that an antique wooden clock had appeared in the tree, as though growing from a branch. On it were marked the hours to thirteen, as on the nursery clock in the lightning.  
"You have thirteen hours to unriddle the Labyrinth," Seifer told her, "before your baby brother becomes one of us."  
"Us?"  
Seifer nodded. "Forever."  
Magic still hummed in the air. Quistis was standing still, hair tossing in the wind, looking out across the valley toward the castle. After a while, she said, "Tell me where I start."  
She waited for an answer, and finally she heard him say, "A pity."  
"What?" She turned her head to look up at him, but he was not there. She spun all around. He had vanished. She was alone in the night, on a windswept hilltop. She looked across again at the castle. The storm was passing away. Blades of clouds sliced across the moon. She thought she glimpsed the figure of an owl, high above, wings spread wide on the air, as he flew steadily away from her.  
She took another step forward, down the hillside. But there was no ground beneath her feet. She began to fall. 

___________________________________________________  
Tee hee, Chapter 5 of Blue Magic should be done with Wenesday, but here is some fun for ya'll.  
And a choice:  
Quall or Quiefer?


End file.
